Caricom Countries May Be Taken Off EU Tax Haven List

Pending submisison of new tax rules, Grenada and Barbados may become two Caribbean Community, Caricom, countries that can be removed from a new European Union, EU, list of global tax havens. 

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Is EU List of Tax Haven Countries a 'Whitewash'?

Other countries or overseas territories that may be removed from the list are Panama, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Macau, Mongolia and Tunisia, according to the Jamaica Observer.

EU finance ministers will convene next week in Brussels to officially announce those jurisdictions and countries that will be removed from the list.

Those recommended for removal will be placed on the so-called grey list, a series of countries that have sworn to implement changes, including tax transparency, cooperation and any other tax-related matters that must be in compliance with EU standards.

The EU's so-called Code of Conduct Group, a group of tax experts from the 28 member states, established a delisting protocol for those countries that want to be removed from the list. Their goal: to ensure that EU tax standards are adhered to by other countries.

Countries and overseas territories that risk remaining on the list include American Samoa, Guam, Bahrain, the Marshall Islands, Namibia, Palau, St. Lucia, Samoa and Trinidad and Tobago, according to Reuters.

In December, following 10 months of investigations, the EU released a list of 17 countries, or overseas colonies, it deemed as being tax havens.

However, some critics, far from hailing the list as an accurate, comprehensive picture of those countries failing to crack down on offshore tax avoidance schemes, branded it a “whitewash.”

Sven Giegold, a member of the European Parliament and economics spokesperson for the Green Group, said the list is "politically-biased as relevant financial centers like the United States of America are missing.”

He added that the new list “undermines the EU's credibility that member states were only able to agree on a whitewashed blacklist of tax havens.”

Caricom slammed the EU, saying that it was "arbitrary and punitive" to list four of its member states on its tax haven list.